Customization has long been a part of the luxury landscape. From tailor-made suits to a modified sports cars, personalizing your hard-earned investment is almost de rigueur these days—except when it comes to luxury watches. Now De Bethune is aiming to change that.
The Swiss watchmaker has announced an industry first with its Sensoriel Chronometry Project. Buyers of its DB28GS Grand Bleu timepiece will have the chance to receive customized chronometric adjustments of their watch by the De Bethune Chronometry Workshop.
The process is fairly simple for De Bethune customers. Buy the DB28GS Grand Bleu, and you’ll receive a test watch. Wear the test watch for just two weeks, charging it periodically in a simple charging station or using a classic USB cable, and it will collect enough data for De Bethune’s Chronometry Workshop to analyze your personal type of wear. After the experts at De Bethune have adjusted your timepiece accordingly, you’ll receive your custom watch along with a personalized report detailing all the data used for its adjustment.
To offer this service, the process is anything but simple for De Bethune. In order to collect data for the chronometric adjustment, the brand built a robot arm and then installed it in an atmospheric chamber. Using state-of-the-art technology, this device receives all the data gathered by the test watch’s sensors—approximately two million pieces of information per hour. This information is harvested and populated in a database that analyzes the real-life constraints the watch is subjected to. From there, an exclusive team of experts at De Bethune can adjust the watch to uniquely suit the owner and their lifestyle.
De Bethune is initially rolling out this special custom offering with purchases of its DB28GS Grand Bleu timepiece. However, the brand has plans to gradually ramp up its efforts each year, hopefully offering the service for other models in the near future. Let the customization begin.
